juxtaposedsoul
Active member
I think I did overdo the nitric on my last batch. It was not a good thing. I started (on my very first batch, that is) using 1.2ml nitric for each gram of sterling, plus 1.2ml of distilled water. This did not work well as 24 hrs. later (with no heating) the sterling was mostly intact. I added the equivalent of 0.3ml nitric p/gram of silver add heated on medium-low setting of my hot plate. This worked pretty well but the solution inevitably began to evaporate. I stopped heating after about one hour and let cool. Still a fair amount of solid pieces. Doubled the solution with distilled water and filtered old-school style. I dropped the silver with copper piping and retained and THOROUGHLY washed the undissolved silver for later refining (meaning the large chunks caught in the filters). So I ended up using 1.5ml nitric to 1.2ml H20 per gram of metal on my first batch. It worked well as far as the quality of the silver but left a lot undigested. I need help here. I have tried it by the book (Hoke's book) and I have tried slight variations from 1.1ml nitric/1.1ml H2O up to 1.6ml nitric/1.6ml H20 at each tenth of a ml in between. All ratios have worked pretty good but I still have undigested silver. Why is that? Shouldn't "soaking" for 24 hrs. or heating for several hours be long enough? I am using Lazersteve's recipe for 50% nitric and using 99.9% pure sodium nitrate crystals and Liquid Fire sulfuric. I am certain my portions and procedure are exact when making the nitric, including the freeze time. What am I doing wrong that my silver should be so difficult to digest? Please- I know it's the oldest question on the forum and has been addressed numerous times, but none of the previous posts are helping. As always, thank you very, very much for the help.
